Tessa Wills hosts a reformulation retreat with tactics of Hermitude. An interlude to absorb, consider, recover and integrate information mid-Festival. Solo processing in a group. Discussing some of the major themes as they are danced, felt, lived out throughout FRESH 2017. Reckoning with the underlying question of how to positively utilize the impact on our lives of the new administration, particularly as it relates to empathy through aesthetics. A social-thinking performative-resting non-demanding-kinda hybrid space.

'The Hermit Project at Fort Mason' is a FREE participatory arts performance by Tessa Wills at the festival 'THIS IS WHAT I WANT 2016'. This performance is part of a The Hermit Project, a multi year investigation into solitude and private performances as a political force, a social strategy, a place of privilidge, a process that needs resources, a place to be individual. The Hermit Project at Fort Mason is a four day durational participatory piece by festival artistic director Tessa Wills, and some very charming Hermit Hosts. With you, we guess we will become an Observance (collective) of Hermits. Come play in a salt cave, and watch Wills perform as an ornamental Hermit for 9 hours a day. In our connected world, does spending time alone fertilize your relationship with solitude? How are you faring in a culture that worships the individual yet fears alienation? Wills acts as a solitary person who sets off the landscape.

Tessa Wills creates experiments in live performance which activate individuals and subcultural communities. Leveraging the distance provided by theatre as a behaviour form, she excavates moments of humanity for the audience to reflect and connect to. She often integrates eroticism to charge the bodies of work which happen primarily on stage and video. Wills is also the artistic director and producer of THIS IS WHAT I WANT festival.www.tessawills.com

The Hermit Project

Studio 308 Building A Fort Mason Center for The Arts

Performance installation 10AM-7:30PM Tuesday 7th until Friday the 10th of June 2016. FREE